How to promote a Social Networking site?

Hey everyone!

One of my friends has built a pretty sweet Social Networking site from scratch.

http://www.yuniti.com

It's up and running well, is popular among it's users + has some great features.

The challenge now is getting enough people to use it for it to really take off and grow by invites etc.


So... how would you promote a site like this? Anybody have any tips or ideas?

He can afford to spend some $ on marketting, but like any of us doesn't want his hard earned money going down the pan

 

How about writing articles about his expertise - social networking? Talk about his site in generate and detailing how it is different from the others/competition. You can submit your articles to different article directories.

He can probably also do a YOU TUBE video on his site...looking at the site's functionality and again comparing it to other sites. Its important to show the value to the readers.

I am not too sure if you can do this..but couldn't you use other social networking sites to promote his site? Face book/myspace

He should also get on forums and get feedback on his site from experts in forums such as Digital Point. I would definitely encourage you to encourage him to join forums.

 

First off, thanks Gaz for getting on here and helping out man! I really appreciate it.

Also thank you Shawn for all the input, also very much appreciated.

As far as writing articles go, I've written various - on forums, yahoo answers, and even paid for some press releases. Seems none of them really get noticed!

As for using other networking sites to spread, used that as well. Yuniti was actually the first networking site to have an "import feature" - people even posted on forums about how it was a great feature. It basically allows you to "yoink" your profile from MySpace/Facebook so you dont' have to start anew. And you have an option of emailing your friends on there.

I've basically exhausted all methods I can think of - it seems that anyone I email or any site which I ask to review Yuniti simply doesn't take it seriously.

I don't completely blame them - with all the networking sites that have been popping up, it's tough to take any of them seriously. But most of them simply use paid-for or open source social networks, so there's not much original about them.

Again I appreciate the input, please keep it coming!

 

marquinhocb : my tips.. advertise your networking link to a ptc website such as bux.to = worth paying =)

 

mecatrix: Thanks for the tip, but it seems that the traffic provided by bux.to is not only bad (i.e. of the 150+ uniques I had, not a single one registered), but also seems to be somewhat of a fraud: they promise 1000 users visiting for at least 30 seconds, and google analytics shows me only 174 users all staying < 1 second.

Continue to welcome ideas...

 

Read these posts:
- http://andrewchen.typepad.com/andrew...ious_stra.html
- http://andrewchen.typepad.com/andrew...s_is_not_.html

It may help you...

 

The links you sent don't seem to work when clicked...

 

Well MySpace dominates Social Networking. Why not advertise there? Bulletins, Forums, Groups, and Chat Rooms.

 

Try this way:
- Adwords is not enough for success on the consumer web
- 10 obvious strategies to ruthlessly acquire users

Hope it works this time...

 

To have success with Myspace bulletins you really need to have some friends (and many of them - unless you have something viral). And chat rooms I guess takes too much times (unless, again, you have something viral)...

Maybe Forums and Groups to be more successful...

 

hey that's a pretty neat looking site -

i used to run a phpfox social networking site and used a lot of adwords to drive ppl to our site

 

Use Adwords..Best way ..I think

 

A quite expensive way, I may say ...

 

casualmusic: Thank you! I've put a lot of hard work into it, and it actually does have a lot of things that no other social network does - but it seems that unless you get people to notice you, that isn't worth much.

SicFounder: I am actually advertising on MySpace, well, my users are. I give users the option to invite their friends from MySpace upon signing up, as well as importing photos and their profiles. Additionally, I have friends who are "friend whores", with many thousands of friends.

skywalk: Tried yahoo/adsense/msn adwords, used the free credits (bout $350 worth) + another $300 of my own, with not much luck. I get some users clicking, but they don't seem to stick.

Thanks everyone for the compliments and advice, keep them coming!

 

How about advertise on Facebook?

 

You could also use usfreeads to build backlinks for your networking site.

 

Bonus4You: Tried that heh, they didn't like it too much (their terms say no sites which directly compete w/ Facebook)

bigmodo: Haven't heard of usfreeads, will look into it.

 

Try to contact some authority tech sites and get them to review your social site.
Submit to each and every social bookmarking site you could find as well